Monday, October 28, 2013

Historic Event: On October
28, 1863 the Confederate commerce raider CSS
Georgia finished her first and only cruise, limping into the French port
of Cherbourg with her bottom so
badly fouled that she was deemed no longer fit for military duty. Her commander, Commander William L. Maury agreed to
have her decommissioned and to sell her off, but first removed her armament for
transfer to another raider, CSS
Rappahannock, which he had purchased through Confederate agents in Britain.

CSS
Rappahannock was ordered seized by the British government, but Rebel
agents managed to get her underway in late November 1864 and made it out of
English waters – only to develop engine trouble in the Channel. She was commissioned while at sea and made it
to Calais – but before she could be
armed with the Georgia’s
guns the French government ordered her detained. The Rappahannock never
sailed under the Rebel flag again, nor did Georgia’s
guns ever fire again.

The CSS
Georgia had only a brief career – purchased in Britain and armed and commissioned
at sea in April 1863, she too nine prizes during her six month cruise in the
Atlantic. Maury removed their cargoes and set the ships
afire, causing over $400,000 in damages to her Yankee owners. (Image below is a photograph of an artwork, mounted on a carte de visiteproduced by Rideau, Cherbourg, France, circa 1863-64, and is part of the U.S. Navy Historical Center's collection).

CSSGeorgia
and CSSRappahannock
in Rebel
Raiders

Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is a strategic game of the Civil
War which focuses on the role of the navies on the rivers, along the coasts and
on the oceans. While most ships are
represented by generic counters for Ironclads, Blockade Runners, Gunboats,
Screw Sloops and, of course Raiders, there are cards and corresponding counters
for many individual vessels. Neither CSS
Rappahannock nor CSS
Georgia are represented by a named counter, but are represented by one
of the generic Raiders counters. The purchase, detention and eventual seizure
of the CSS
Rappahannock is represented in the game, for all Raiders are built in
one of the two European ports on the map (England,
or France &
Spain). Through play of USN Card 55 – Diplomatic Pressure – a die is rolled for each Raider
and Blockade Runner in one of those ports:
on a 1, 2 or 3 it is seized, as was CSS
Rappahannock, and on a 4,5, or 6 it is forced to sea, where it may be
hunted by any waiting Union warships.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

-Dedicated to Civil War episodes, battles, people and ships
that also appear in my game, GMT’s Rebel Raiders on the High Seas,

October 27, 1863 Opening the “Cracker Line” at Chattanooga

Historical Event: During the night of October 27, 1863 a Union
infantry brigade stealthily moved by boat downriver and past the Confederate
batteries on Lookout Mountain to land and establish a bridgehead on the west
bank of the Tennessee River at Brown’s Ferry.
The brigade repulsed Rebel counterattacks and opened a supply path to
the embattled defenders of Chattanooga,
a route that would become famous as the “Cracker Line.”

Game Connection: Although
primarily a naval game, the land war is represented in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas,
and Chattanooga is a lynchpin in
the defense of the Confederate west. Cards
represent many of the leaders who fought in and around that city, including Union
General Ulysses Simpson Grant (USN Card 8) and Confederate Generals James Longstreet (CSN Card 79) and, at least in image and intent, Braxton
Bragg (USN Card 7 – “A Lack of Brains”).

Monday, October 21, 2013

Happy Birthday, "Old Ironsides"

Today in 1797 the 44-gun frigate USS Constitution was launched in Boston. The oldest commissioned warship afloat (and capable of moving under her own sails!) "Old Ironsides," which earned her nickname from the shot bouncing off her thick hull is still going strong, as visitors (this blogger/game designer for one) who walk her decks in Boston Harbor can attest.

Scheduled for demolition in 1830, she was saved from the scrapyard thanks to Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose poem "Old Ironsides" moved the nation - and more importantly, the White House and Navy Department, to spare the gallant warship. Repaired and refitted, USS Constitution went back to sea with the Mediterranean and Pacific Squadrons, and became the first U.S. "territory" a Pope ever set his slipper on (Pius IX).

Although the USS Constitution played no appreciable role in the Civil War, as she was converted to a training ship in 1857, she did contribute to the fight against slavery: her last capture was a slaver, the H.N. Gambril, which she stopped and boarded off Angola in 1853. When the war began, USS Constitution was stationed at the Naval Academy, but was sent north rather than risk falling into Confederate hands.

In 1862 the Navy honored this, the last of the famous "Six Frigates," by christening an ironclad New Ironsides (which appears in Rebel Raiders as USN Card 26). Her sides clad in real iron, New Ironsides survived many a pounding from Confederate batteries in multiple battles in and around Charleston - and although struck by a spar torpedo from CSS David (a torpedo launch that appears in the game as CSN Card 65), New Ironsides did not live on much past the war, succumbing to fire in December 1865.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Historical Event: On this day in 1863 the experimental submarine CSS Hunley sank for a second time during trials in Charleston. (The first time was August 29, when five crew members drowned). The vessel was raised but a second trial on October 15 proved even more catastrophic – as the ship’s inventor, H.L. Hunley, and seven others drowned. The Confederate Army, which despite the Navy crew remained in charge of the vessel, raised her again. CSS Hunley did go on to attack the Union fleet in 1864, becoming the first submarine to sink a warship.

Game Connection: The CSS Hunley is represented in Rebel Raiders by CSN Card 73. The target of its attack in 1864, the USS Housatonic is also represented in the game (USN Card 27).

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Today is the day the U.S. Navy celebrates its birthday...238 years young! It is a much happier birthday than the one it celebrated 150 years ago today - when the Navy, like the country, was so divided.

When the Civil War broke out, the U.S. Navy was a proud but almost pitifully small force, and one made much smaller by the defection of 259 of its officers to the Confederacy. These 259 included 13 captains, 33 commanders and 94 lieutenants. They helped build a small but potent and technologically forward fighting navy for the South. Meanwhile, the North, to which 40 Southern and the great majority of Northern-born officers remained loyal, grew to become the largest and most powerful fleet in the world - one which if needed could have taken on the Royal Navy (which is represented in Rebel Raiders by CSN Card No. 62)

At war's end, the Union had 671 warships, notes James McPherson in his War Upon the Waters. Of these "all but 112 were steamers, and 71 of them were ironclads." They mounted over 4,600 guns - many of them powerful Columbiads, Parrot Rifles and Dahlgrens (as represented in the Yankee Guns card in Rebel Raiders - USN Card No. 3) (This does NOT include the large number of river warships run by the U.S. Army). The Navy built over 200 ships and purchased or pressed into service another 400-plus (many of them Blockade Runners, such as CSS Advance (CSN Card 67) which was caught off Wilmington in September 1864 while attempting her 21st run, and recommissioned as the gunboat USS Frolic - and then sent back South on blockade duty.According to McPherson, the North spent over $6.8 billion on the war effort - of which less than 8 percent ($587 million) went to the Navy. "By any measure of cost-effectiveness," however, says McPherson "the nation got more than its money's worth."That assessment holds true today - as it has in two world wars and many other conflicts large and small in which the Navy played a signature roll.Happy Birthday, U.S. Navy....and many more.

Friday, October 11, 2013

A gamer who ordered and “eagerly awaits the arrival” of Rebel
Raiders on the High Seas asked if and how the game system handles the
vagaries of running the blockade, and
the abilities of Blockade Runner
captains to find “the ideal moment of tide, moon and wind to make the dash to
open sea” and to navigate the “danger of a dark shoreline” on the way back in.

Blockade Runners have
an advantage over the Union patrols, in that in the die roll to evade
interception they gain a +2 and win ties.
That means if they roll a 4 or higher, they are safe, and if they roll
less, the North still has to beat them by 3
(i.e. if a Blockade Runner
rolls a 1, the Union ship needs a 4 or better to catch her). In addition, there are some Blockade Runners
that are even more difficult to intercept, as are represented by certain
cards. Here are a few examples:

The Don (CSN Card 66)
was a particularly fast twin-screw vessel. Capable of 14 knots and drawing only six feet,
The
Don was hard to run down and could slip into coastal inlets to
hide.

Most blockade runners made a profit by their second voyage;
the CSS
Advance (CSN Card 67) made 20 such successful runs, making her one of
if not the most profitable of all of those ships that ran the Union blockade

The Banshee (CSN Card 68)was
one of the first ships built specifically to run the Union blockade. She was also one of the first commercial
vessels to build of steel. Under Joseph W.
Steele (ironic how the name and the ship match) the ship made eight successful runs, giving her owners their investment
seven times over.

CSS Robert E. Lee (CSN Card 69) began her career as a blockade runner in the fall of 1862. For nearly a year the schooner-rigged, iron-hulled,
oscillating-engine, double-stack paddle-steamer ran in and out of North
Carolina’s inlets and harbors to bring in war
materials and other desperately needed supplies.

The Union, however, had gunboats and
sloops that were expert at catching these ships, and many of them are in the
game. The Union can also stack ships in
the Blockade Stations off the ports, and can either roll one die for each ship
or roll a single, modified die for the stack – the bigger the stack, the better
the chance on that die. The Union
can also set up an outer blockade in the Coastal Zones; the sloops there can do
not get the modifier for a stack, but each ship does roll.

Eventually, in the game as in the war, the Blockade Runners DO get caught. There are 17 Blockade Runner counters in the
game. In the last three games I played,
we kept track, and the Union intercepted 30 to 35 of
them; which means that every Blockade Runner the South started with and built
was caught not just once but TWICE….

Many of the Blockade Runners (all but one of the above, for example) were captured and pressed into service on the blockade stations.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

A big thank you to Rebel Raiders fans! Most of the initial print run has been sold - and GMT is already talking making this a "reprinter." The game went on sale in April, and as of the end of June over 60 percent of the print run was sold...and GMT says third quarter figures look great!

For all of you who have bought, played, commented on, reviewed or otherwise expressed interest and support in my strategic naval game of the Civil War, a big THANK YOU....if I wasn't such a Yankee at heart (an ancestor in the Irish Brigade, 69th NY), I'd give a big rebel yell!

So instead, here's a hearty HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!

....and by the way, I started this blog at Easter (when my son built it for me) and it just topped 10,000 views!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

On this date in 1845 Franklin
Buchanan – who later became the first admiral of the Confederate navy –
opened the doors of the United StatesNavalAcademy
at Annapolis. “Old Buck” was the academy’s first
superintendent, and many of the midshipmen who studied while he was at the helm
of the academy would see him again through the smoke of battle during the Civil
War.

Buchanan did not stay
long at Annapolis, as the old salt
longed to go sea – which he did as second in command of Commodore Matthew
Perry’s expedition that “opened” Japan.
At the start of the Civil War he was commandant of the Navy Yard in Washington,
but resigned his commission and went South after the Baltimore
riots in 1861. (Although when his native Maryland
failed to secede, he tried to get his federal commission back, but Secretary of
the Navy Gideon Welles would have none of that and sent him packing, with a
curse).

Buchanan’s reputation and service, however, propelled him up
the ranks of a grateful Confederacy, which named him its first admiral. “Old Buck” was a fighting admiral, a combat
sailor in the finest tradition of the USNA, personally
taking charge of the South’s first ironclad, the CSS
Virginia at Hampton Roads in 1862 and later the CSS
Tennessee in the fateful battle at MobileBay in 1964.

.

Buchanan is
represented three ways in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas; first, as a leader counter for the
South, and then twice more in the cards – for the two ironclads he commanded
during their historic encounters with the Union navy. Those ships are represented by CSN Cards 70 and 86. Despite having “gone
South,” Buchanan has not been forgotten by the Navy or the Academy: three U.S.
Navy destroyers were named for him, as is the house that serves as the
superintendent’s quarters at Annapolis.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Last week a gamer asked about how Rebel Raiders on the High Seas
handles “the interplay between Southern military
fortunes and how far Britain and France would risk war by building Southern ships?"

As a strategic naval game of the
war, Rebel Raiders has to account for the role played by the great powers of Europe. It does this in several ways:

-1. ShipBuilding: One Raider a
Turn

-Each turn the Confederacy can
build one Raider in either of the two overseas map spaces that represent England and France. Doing so uses up
one of the South’s allotted builds (usually five a turn, but fewer as the South
loses cities), and also requires the expenditure of a Victory Point (this
reflects the cost of purchasing and arming the Raider). There are also cards that provide the South
with a free Raider in one of those ports, and special Raiders at that (CSN Card 63 – CSS
Alabama, CSN Card 64- CSS
Shenandoahand CSN Card 74-CSS
Stonewall).

-2. ShipBuilding: Blockade Runners

-Each turn the Confederacy may
build one or more Blockade Runners overseas.
In 1861 the South builds one abroad, in 1862 they may build two, in
1863, three and in 1864, up to four.
Again, these count toward the South’s allotted builds (although by 1864
the South usually has been reduced below its original build level, and is also
less likely to build Blockade Runners as there are either few ports left to
unload in, or those ports are so heavily blockaded by the Union as to make
getting in or out of them extremely risky. There are also cards that give the
South free Blockade Runners in
Europe (CSN Card 84 – The Douglas) and in the other
overseas boxes, most of which were part of the British, French or Spanish
empires (CSN Card 108-War Profiteers)

-3. Investment:
European Front Companies provide Arms to the South

The South relied on European
companies for much of its war material (as well as luxury goods and civilian
necessities). The loading/unloading of
Victory Points (VPs) reflects that, as these VPs may be used to purchase ships
and batteries and counterattacks, and are needed to fend off the degradations
of the Supply Roll and penalties for losing cities. Several cards reflect this trade, and the
establishment of front companies in their colonies by European interests which
fed arms and other goods to the South.
These include CSN Card 99 – The Queen’s Artillery – which allows the
South to cash in one 2 VP European cargo counter for a battery …which normally
costs 20 VPs, and Cards 87 –Cotton is
King, 93 – Herrera & Co. and 94
– To the Dark Shores, each of which offers the South increased
opportunities to gain additional VPs.

-4. “Intervention”: Trent Affair, Maximillian, and Royal
Navy

-While some games and novelists
like to toy with the ‘what if’ of French or British armies or navies fighting
for the Southern cause, Rebel Raiders sticks to what these
great powers did do, as is reflected in the Cards in the game. The play of the Trent Affair (CSN Card 83)
provides an opening for the play of Maximillian
(CSN Card 61) and Royal Navy (CSN Card 62). The first makes Mexico, where the French had installed Maximillian as emperor,
very friendly to the South: providing one free Blockade Runner a turn plus a modifier to the Southern Supply Roll
die. The second simulates the movement
of British warships and troops to Canada (which occurred as part of Britain’s angry response to the Trent debacle) by requiring the Union to take
warships out of play to guard against this threat (as also occurred).

-5. The Emancipation Proclamation and Diplomatic Pressure

-The Emancipation Proclamation event changes how Europe viewed
the war, and reduces European support to the Confederacy. It removes
Trent, Maximillian and Royal Navy from the game (and if Royal Navy has been played, frees up
the Union warships which responded to it).
It also removes two of the six VP
cargo markers from play, which makes it more difficult for the South to bring
home large amounts of Victory Points each turn. Diplomatic
Pressure (USN Card 55) forces the discard of Trent or Royal Navy and,
if played after The Emancipation
Proclamation, closes one of the two European ports. Any Confederate ships in that closed port are
either chased out (where they can be intercepted) or seized by the European
government.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is a strategic game of the Civil
War which focuses on the role of the navies on the rivers, along the coasts and
on the oceans. Those ships carried a
wide variety of weaponry, but among the most popular, at least on the Union
side, were the storied Dahlgren smoothbores.
These mighty weapons which could hurl a 130-pound shot almost a mile were
the mainstay of the fleet, and along with Parrot Rifles and other big cannons
are represented in the game by the “Yankee
Guns” of USN Card Number 3.

The inventor of the Dahlgren gun is also in the game:
Captain (later Admiral) John
Dahlgren, (USN Card 31, which bears
his name), as are many of the ships he armed and later commanded. Dahlgren chaffed at the bit for years, being
told he was too valuable in Washington
and was a desk not blue water sailor – a jibe he proved wrong after taking over
the South Atlantic Squadron from Samuel
Francis DuPont (USN Card 54) off Charleston
in 1863. Although known as the “father
of naval ordnance” he showed himself every bit the sea salt of his
contemporaries, becoming one of the first five admirals of the U.S. Navy. (David
Glasgow Farragut – who appears on the “Damn
The Torpedoes” card (USN Card 1) was the first, and DuPont, as well as David Dixon Porter – who appears on USN Card 2 were among the others in the
first crop of those elevated to flag officer status). Each of these admirals, by the way, owed their successes at least in part to Dahlgren the guns he invented, produced and saw installed on their ships.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

The Raiders - CSSAlabama

Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is a strategic game of the Civil
War which focuses on the role of the navies on the rivers, along the coasts and
on the oceans. While most ships are
represented by generic counters for Ironclads, Blockade Runners, Gunboats,
Screw Sloops and, of course Raiders, there are cards and corresponding counters
for many individual vessels. This series
presents those cards and offers a glimpse into the history of these storied
ships.

Arguably the most iconic of the fleet of cruisers that
sailed the high seas as commerce raiders, the CSS Alabama is not only represented by a
card (CSN Card 63) but also graces
the box cover. Under Captain Raphael Semmes, already
notorious for commanding the Confederacy’s first (and only domestically armed)
raider, CSS Sumter, the CSS Alabama began her career as a raider in
the North Atlantic in August 1862. By year’s end Semmes had taken over two dozen
prizes, including a mail steamer packed with passengers off Cuba
in December.

Semmes headed into the Gulf and in January fought and sunk a
Union warship, the converted heavy steamer USS
Hatteras, (USN Card 16 in Rebel
Raiders) near Galveston. Over the course of 1863 he hunted down and
captured or sank more than 40 merchantmen.
By the spring of 1864, however, the ship (and the now ailing Semmes)
were badly in need of repair and refit, and the CSS Alabama put into port in Cherbourg,
France.

The USS Kearsarge
(USN Card 14) followed, and its
captain issued a challenge to Semmes, whom the Federal government and Union
newspapers derided as a “pirate.” His
sense of honor as a naval officer piqued, Semmes responded to the taunts by
sailing out on June 19 to do unequal battle.
Semmes fought his ship for nearly an hour against the much more heavily
armed Union warship whose Yankee Guns (USN
Card 3) reduced her to a fiery
wreck.

About Me

Mark G. McLaughlin is a Connecticut-based freelance journalist and game designer with over 30 years of experience as a ghostwriter and columnist. An author whose first published book was Battles of the American Civil War, Mark continues to be enthralled by history, wargames, and science fiction.